Gulp.
Here's a letter from one of the professors directly affected. It tells you better than I could the frightening circumstances.
Dear Friends and Colleagues,
Today the seven members of the French faculty at SUNY--Albany (all tenured) were informed that by presidential decision, ostensibly for budgetary reasons, the French program has been "deactivated" at all levels (BA, MA, PhD), as have BA programs in Russian and Italian. The only foreign language program unaffected is Spanish. The primary criterion used in making the decision was undergrad majors-to-faculty ratio. We were told that tenured faculty in French, Russian, and Italian will be kept on long enough for our students to finish their degrees--meaning three years at the outside. Senoir faculty are being encouraged to take early retirement. The rest of us are being urged to "pursue our careers elsewhere," as our Provost put it.
To read more, click here.Needless to say, the decision is personally devastating to those of us affected, but it is also symptomatic of the ongoing devaluation of foreign-language and other humanities program in universities across the United States. I'm writing to ask for your help in spreading the word about this decision as widely as possible and in generating as much negative media publicity as possible against SUNY--Albany and the SUNY system in its entirety.
There is much background to add about how this decision was reached and implemented, too much for me to explain fully here. Suffice it to say that the disappearance of French, Italian, and Russian has resulted from an almost complete lack of leadership at the Albany campus and in the SUNY system. Our president, a former state pension fund manager, holds an MBA as his highest degree, has never held a college or university teaching position, and has never engaged in any kind of scholarship.
More disturbing still, due process was not followed in the decision-making process. The affected programs were not consulted or given the opportunity to propose money-saving reforms. Our Dean and Provost simply hand-selected an advisory committee to rubber stamp the president's decision. The legalities of the situation remain to be discussed with our union, UUP, but in the meantime I welcome any advice you may have.
best,
Brett
Brett Bowles
Associate Professor of French Studies
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5 comments:
How terrible. Under circumstances not entirely different than these, our private U. effectively dismantled the Latin American Studies program last year, by terminating the positions of its central faculty (who were not tenured, but had been recently hired on the tenure track). Yet one of our missions is to cultivate "global citizenship."
That President resigned mid-year--but the damage is done. These are *really* bad times, and I wonder if the Humanities and Languages will ever recover.
Thanks very much for the story.
MAH
It's unfortunate but they're far from the only ones. USC is dropping its German department, CSU Fullerton announced plans to get rid of the Portuguese and German degrees (though leaving the option of a minor) and the French Masters program; at least one language may be on the chopping block at Saddleback as well.
Scary times - and the lack of process makes it even more so. What can be done? Did the faculty have a good contract?
This is terribly sad. ES
We have the same issue at IVC. Faculty don't know it yet. Program discontinuance by administrative manipulation.
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